Thanks Flo! I also want to mention to your viewers that Lee Kum Kee makes two versions of oyster sauce (non vegan). The one you have with the mother and child on the bottle and the one with the Panda. The one with the mother and child has a higher content of oysters (per Kenji Lopez-Alt).
TQ Flo, will be stocking sauces mentioned here as from over 18 months lock down, I was unsure which sauces to combine and was only using light/dark sauces and Panda brand oyster sauce. Looking forward to the Homestyle Chinese cookbook. With reference to your RU-vid channel, my mom used to add few thin slices of pork Chinese sausages to the steamed egg, quick hearty rice/steamed breakfast before school!!! Or she instantly break an egg into bowl of hot rice, dash of sesame oil/white pepper for a healthy breakfast. Now I wonder why I'm as 'strong as an ox' in my 70's!!! God bless you and your family!!! We've been to delightful Vancouver, as part of a cruise on the 'Inner Passage', really beautiful part of the world. 🙂
@@sunflowerbaby1853 The Middle Eastern sesame sauce is very different in taste-- I don't know why. It is called Tahini and looks sort of creamy. When in the USA I buy the brand that has a dude on it wearing a turban. Sorry, I don't recall the brand name. The Asian sesame oil is more toasted tasting and pours quickly. I buy the Kadoya brand but most brands have similar taste. Read the label because sometimes the cheap Asian ones are cut with soybean oil. Go for 100% sesame oil. Must keep it in fridge to protect flavor. Buy smallest quantity unless you use it a lot.
Yes, these are my go to Asian sauces as well, many of the exact same brands. In my list of basics, I would have to add Kadoya Sesame Oil. I use Sesame Oil in most Asian dishes.
what a charming lady you are! [I am a 77 yr old East Texan who has studied Mandarin for 58 years and worked throughout the Far East] I cook a wide variety of 'oriental' dishes. I genuinely enjoy following your YT channel. Blessings and Joy to you and yours.
This is a brilliant video, I had to comment before watching lol. But I have wanted someone to do a video like this for so long. This will definitely make my cooking so much easier. Thank you so much for sharing 👏🏼👏🏼❤️
This was such a wonderful (and helpful!) video. I have all the sauces, but didn’t really understand why. Now I have a much better understanding. Thank you so much, Flo and Dude! TFS, Sharon🤗
Best brands for everyday sauces... Oyster = Spend extra, and get the Lee Kum Kee "old style" (must get old style, with the label with a lady on the boat, NOT the panda) as shown by Flo. Hoisin = Lee Kum Kee or Koon Chun Hoisin Sauce Sesame oil = Kadoya (Japanese) Soy Sauce (reg aka light) = Kikkoman
@@MegaFortinbras I've used Squid Brand fish sauce, but it's been a while. I like that it's made in Thailand, and came in a glass bottle (vs plastic bottle).
Gracias!! Thanks for your video. Last Christmas a neighbour bake a jam with Hoisin sauce, it s my favorite! I try also chinese chili sauce with ice cream! Delicious.
Awesome topic! I also want to say thanks for showing me the world of Chinese and Malaysian cooking. I have learned so much watching your videos the last 6 months. I can walk into my local Asian market and I know what to look for now! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Glad you are giving substitutes. Being gluten free there is only one soy sauce I can use. Thank you for this. Thankfully I have found gluten free hosin sauces and sweet rice wine. Love your recipes
Thank heavens for this. I am in Nova Scotia and we got a wonderful new (to me) Oriental grocery store. You bet I went shopping for lots of new goodies.
Since I do a lot of Asian cooking I keep most of the sauces that you have on hand. I saw Helen of Helen's Recipes have a t-shirt about fish sauce that says smells like Hades, tastes like Heaven. I never smell it, I never taste it but if the recipe calls for it I add it in! On the subject of cooking wine, I never ever use "cooking" wine because it's salted. I know why, but I've been trying to minimize my salt so I use sherry wine. One sauce I've made myself but then found a bottle of it and since then I haven't, is caramel sauce. I presume I can use dark soy sauce to replace that in a Vietnamese recipe. I'll see the next time I make some more Ga Kho Gung! Thanks for this video! I know it has to help a lot of people! I've been a student of Runaway Rice since 2013 so I'm not unfamiliar with some of them! Best wishes to you and yours!!!!
What is sold as "cooking wine" in supermarkets is wine that is so bad as to be unsellable, so they dump a ton of salt into it and sell it to the unsuspecting public. Rule number one for cooking with wine is, "Don't cook with a wine that you wouldn't be prepared to put into a glass and drink." That's not to say that you should use super fancy stuff. Cooks Illustrated magazine did an experiment where they took premier cru wine and some California plonk (Gallo's Hearty Burgundy as I recall) and made two otherwise identical batches of boeuf bourguignon. None of the tasters could tell the difference. Personally, I get the "Three Buck Chuck" (Charles Shaw wine) from Trader Joe's. It's cheap and works well for cooking. One thing I really liked when I lived in Italy was the availability of really good cheap wine.
I have that fish sauce, Asian is #1 on my top 3 cultural foods. and it doesn't matter what type of Asian I will opt for that over any other country hands down!
Hey Flo, I've been a fan and a subscriber for a long time. Just love all the food and especially the Instapot recipes (Props to 'The Dude'). Your subject today is great and brought up a suggestion I have had a couple of times on different channels for Asian cooking (I haven't asked here for the record). I don't have a lot of room and I need to keep seasonings and oils for specific styles in boxes that we store out of the kitchen. If I was to ask you to pack a 12X12 box with everything I would need for cooking a wide assortment of Asian (Chinese, Maybe Korean/Thai) dishes, What oil, spice, sauce, maybe special rice or dried things like that would you put in that box and what might you have as options? Maybe you could do an episode on it :)
Sorry for the rant. I would go further and say, if you were to design a box like I was talking about, and then started cooking recipes using only the seasonings and things from that box, I bet there's a lot of us that would jump on that, cuz then it's like 'Oh look, Flo's got a new Asian recipe, where's my Asian cooking box... Let's Cook'... Ok, Rant off.
Very useful, thank you. The array of sauces is quite bewildering and this video brings a lot of clarity. I will now search to see whether you have done a video on the various bean and shrimp pastes.
Thank you for the great compilation, Flo! Which of these sauces would you absolutely keep refrigerated? I try to keep as much as I can in my cupboard to save space in my fridge but I want to make sure there aren’t any that must be refrigerated. I wish the premium oyster sauce came in a squeeze bottle.
I keep oyster sauce and hoisin sauce (because my mom and grandma did) and Kecap Manis (because it’s new to me and it says so on the bottle) in the fridge. I think a lot of the bottles say to put in fridge but I did not grow up with all of them in the fridge. They have used the same bottle for oyster sauce since forever!
@@FloLum how long do these sauces really last in the fridge? The bottles tend to be huge. Although I don’t mind the size of the black ketchup bottle. I use it a lot, with a bit of 5 spice and its wonderful. Also love the hoisin Sauce on chicken as a BBQ sauce...yum!
A super crucial video for those who wasn't in the know, thank you. You are about to hit 200K subscribers homie! Thats something you and your family can feel good about :)
my mom always uses the lee kum kee oyster sauce for marinating meat and thai oystersauce for stir-frys and fried rice. She also uses the vietnamese fishsauce with crab logo for stronger tasting dishes, and the Thai fishsauce with picture of squid if she wants the dishes to not be overpowered by the fishsauce flavor and it's the best fish sauce to make sweet fish dipping sauce for spring rolls.
Great video. I love all of those sauces. I know what you mean by "that extra something." It's like anchovies in caesar dressing. If it's not there and you know proper caesar, you'll think "This is missing something." I describe it to friends like this: If you're listening to music, you may not be aware of the French horn in the background, but if it stopped you'd think "Hey, something's missing."
Hello Flo. This was the video i was looking for! A question if i may. Should these sauces be refrigerated once opened and what is there shelf life? Sorry if it's a stupid question. And one other thing. I do get confused with the amount of noodles on offer in my local Asian food wholesaler. It's actually daunting. Most of the time i get the dried medium egg noodle which are fine but was wondering should i try others. Thank you so much for your content and hope you can help. Sorry, one other thing. I was one of the people who avoided fish sauce because of the raw smell from the bottle. Now i do use it and realised the extra depth it gives the dish. And your right, It really does make such a huge difference to the dish.
Thanks for this video. I'm Filipino and trying to cook other Asian dishes but we rarely use dark soy or the Ketchum manis sauce. Nice to know its consistency and flavor type.
Asian dishes, mostly Indonesian and Malay cuisine use sweet soy sauce/ ketchup manis when the recipe called for soy sauce unless it stated otherwise. Chinese dishes use a lot of light soy sauce and thick soy sauce or cooking caramel.
As always, Flo and Dude, Excellent! For thoes who feel fish sauce is to strong, try Red Boat brand. It really good flaver, but much lighter. I don't use it for cooking as it would need to use more. I use it more as a condement at the table or for salad dressing. This is a premium product, and comes at a premium price! For cooking, I use Three Crabs. It is a great product as well.
Man I miss asian food. Had to give up my favorites because I was diabetic. cured it though, but dont want to go there again. I just dont eat any carbs at all and i'm good, BUT goodbye noodles, goodbye sweet and sour chicken, sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, spring rolls... really, really miss those. Still love watching you cook.
Awesome video! Kecap Manis/Sweet Soy Sauce is SOOOOOOO good! Happy to see you're a fan, too! We've actually been using it solo when a recipe calls for soy sauce and sugar. It also adds SUCH a depth of good flavour to any recipe (I told my in-laws in South Korea that I'd used it in Bulgogi... after they got over the shock, they tried it and now say they are using it for not just Bulgogi, but dishes that call for cooking syrup & soy). Also, the Shiaoxing cooking wine REALLY makes a wonderful difference (again, my Korean in-laws will use just it OR do half Shiaoxing half cooking Sake... I haven't tried that because I love the Shiaoxing so much LOL). Thank you for yet another wonderful video!
When you have recipes with soy sauce, hoisin, or oyster…I’m going to try it because those are all my favorites! Thanks for the info on light and dark soy sauce!
I use hoisin as a gluten-free approximation when cooking for a family member and adjust around it. I also recently found a GF "oyster-flavored" sauce which is about as close as I can use. Thank you for the sauce run-down.
Yay! Haven't listened yet. So..now the difference in say Korean, vs Japanese , Vietnamese. Esp with noodles, rice wine (esp.the names] and bean curd, ted bean curd , oh my!! LOL Not a sauce but ohmy gosh the variety of canned tuna with different flavors!! LOL thats in So. Charleston, WV. Ive not been in another in 11 yrs , like in WDC etc. This is great video. Amen on the fish & sauces! Esp in thai noodles!! LOL
I still need to buy Hoisin sauce and some oyster sauce. I just bought light soy sauce. Oh! And I need rice wine and some vinegar, but I've been collecting things like sesame oil, sesame seeds, ginger.
Can you do (or have you done) a show on "bachelor " kitchen quik meals? We all don't have at hand the extras like the different suaces and things like sesame/almonds on hand. Something like a quik beef/pork/chicken stir fry with the veggies in the fridge?🙂
Thanks I live in very small town America I go to Asian section in grocery store and and hear crickets Got soy and hibachi sauce and something I don't know what thanks for this I'll go to Amazon
I have oyster sauce and hoisin sauce from Kroger. They taste look and smell identical. So if it's and american recipe that says they are interchangeable that's probably why.
Evan Williams is "unarguably" the best bourbon for the buck ... by miles! Also ... keep going with this type of info ... it is so helpful ... and, please do one on Asian Greens/Vegetables. So often when i'm in Asian grocery, i pick up a bunch of greens and have no idea what they are and how to use them, yet i intuitively know they are good and health giving. Please advise.
The dark soysaus is to color the ingredients, lets say you have mushroom, those color very well, I use fish saus only when I don't have meat in the noodles, same goes for oyster saus, when It is a fish noodle it goes in with the ketcap (sweet and thick variant) when I have meat noodles I use hoisin saus, and, always add some sugar! because after the dark soy saus I add extra kikkoman light soy saus to add extra liquid to cook the veggies, but it also serves to keep the ketcap thinner, when the veggies are light to medium cooked I turn the gas off and the noodles go in, everything turn brown very nice, and it tast better if you have added some oil to bake the veggies... :P
Thank you Flo for explaining it.. i was getting aggravated because i could never hit an asain market.. so i have it all in my basket in amazon... other than oyster and hoisin its those darn wines..and dark soy.. now i need to add the lite and sweet soys .. darnit LOL.. but i have a feeling thats whats missing
Hi Flo! 👋 I have all but the ketchup one, (I know I spelled it incorrectly-the third soy, and I cannot find Saoxing wine (again w/the spelling). So having said that- why can’t I cook like you? 😉 I hope you’re all doing great. God Bless you & your family. Xxoo
@@FloLum ♥️ I shared this video w/my son and saved it-seriously. My son is turning into a chef! And lately he’s been relieving me of cooking! Yay! “I just can’t be bothered!” 🤣
You will get there. I had no idea how to do Chinese cooking before the pandemic and now several of flo's recipes are standbys. Keep practicing! It's ok to mess up. I do all the time :p
